Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet press event Aug. 30, 2011, took place at The W Hotel in New York City, which was a perfect compliment to the Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet style. Sophisticated yet austere, Lenovo has made sure this isn’t just another Android tablet. But is it enough? Here’s what the channel should know about Lenovo’s latest tablet efforts …
True to the ThinkPad style, the ThinkPad Tablet is rectangular, black, with a rubberized matte back. It feels good in your hands and is relatively thin for a 10-inch tablet, (though not as thin as the 10-inch Galaxy Tab.) The ThinkPad Tablet has a plethora of ports, including micro SIM, SD card, regular USB, mini HDMI out and a nifty slot for the ThinkPad Tablet Stylus.
For Lenovo, the stylus is king. Lenovo demoed the stylus capabilities, which boil down to mainly annotation inside PDFs and handwriting recognition (although Autodesk was there demoing its sketching application, which was impressive). The stylus is not a capacitive stylus (it didn’t work on my iPhone) but rather an “active” stylus, which interacts with the screen directly. The ThinkPad Tablet comes pre-loaded with a note-taking application that — pretty quickly and accurately — turns scribble into text. Press the button on the stylus while pointing at your newly transcribed text, and you can auto-correct it if the program got it wrong. Sadly, PDF annotating doesn’t happen right out of the box, but the active stylus is compatible with any annotation program you can download. Lenovo has also built into the Android keyboard a special handwriting capability (T9 Write), which was developed in conjunction with Nuance Technology. It’s all integrated nicely and I can see stylus-savvy users really loving the precise writing capabilities. But aside from the applications that utilize it, the pen is really not much more than a plastic finger. There is no system-wide layer of handwriting recognition. If a stylus isn’t your thing, that’s fine, because it’s an extra $30 tacked on to the base price of $499 for a 16GB unit.
In my opinion, typing is way more important than pointing. Lenovo’s keyboard folio strives to provide that. The whole folio is a beefy unit, but an absolute pleasure to type on. I cannot stress this enough. The keys are tactile, responsive, and have just the right about of squishy chiclet style resistance, just like a ThinkPad. Added bonus is the ubiquitous ThinkPad red mouse pointer nub. It works across the entire Android OS, with a little blue glowing pointer that compliments the Android Honeycomb theme. The dual mouse buttons act predictably depending the application usage.
Problem is, when you bundle it all up and fold it together, the thing is really thick — 2 inches or 3 inches thick — and a tad on the heavier side. It also blocks and uses the only standard USB port on the device. There’s no really way around this, which his sad. The good news is that, when the tablet is out of the keyboard folio, the USB port is quite useful. Lenovo has included an app that lets you easily move data and files to and from the internal memory to an external memory device that may be attached to the device. That means the ThinkPad Tablet, which starts at 16GB internally, has a lot of space expansion, including the micro SD card slot and the USB slot. That’s a super important feature for business users pulling data off thumb drives or digital cameras.
The Tegra 2 CPU that powers the ThinkPad Tablet was speedy, pulling up apps and multitasking very quickly, but there were still some instances of odd stuttering and general lag. I think this is just something I’m going to have to learn to live with in the Android world. Bonus: the quality of the front and rear cameras were good, and (though not designed for low-light environments) much better than the iPad 2′s.
Lenovo is focusing hard on its core demographic, playing up the business user with the Lenovo App Shop. It’s exactly what it sounds like, and includes a comprehensive collection of pre-vetted applications, certified malware-free. Come October 2011, Lenovo plans to launch a similar offering, dubbing it the Enterprise App Shop, with deeper focus on productivity applications geared toward enterprise needs, including bulk-application purchasing.
The bottom line for me? The ThinkPad Tablet is one of two Android tablets on my list, second only to the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Amid a world of plastic shiny and sluggish junk tablets, Lenovo really stands out. You can feel the engineering behind the device and appreciate the solid build quality. No creaks or groans or cracks, The ThinkPad Tablet feels like one cohesive device, much like the iPad. Lenovo has endeavored to hit all the niche complaints business users want addressed, while quelling security issues IT admins have through encryption capabilities. This is a super-easy device to recommend, and I’m happy I can say that.
But while Lenovo may have started a small love affair with Android Honeycomb and me, I don’t believe it’ll be replacing my iPad anytime soon. However, for a business user on the fence about what to buy, I say go for Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet. Lenovo truly cares about the business user more than anything, and they company is listening to you.
The ThinkPad Tablet rates a 8.5/10.
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Hey dave, please compare the software implementation of the stylus between the HTC flyer and thinkpad tablet. How does evernote’s integration with the stylus on the flyer compare to the notes app in the thinkpad tablet?
Hi Frank,
I saw your message in my teaser story. I’m sorry, but I’ve never played with an HTC Flyer so I can’t comment and compare directly. But from what I know about the HTC Flyer, I can tell you that HTC seems like they’ve built a lot of writing and note-taking technology into the HTC Flyer to make the stylus something really special.
That’s not to say Lenovo threw in the stylus an afterthought, but it does seem less robust. It does, however, like the Flyer stylus, have an active button to interact with the content you’ve written down.
Remember also, that the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet is a 10-inch tablet, while the Flyer is 7 inches. I think you’d’ be more comfortable writing out pages on a 10 inch tablet, than with a 7 inch one, but that’s my personal opinion.
I also think that the ThinkPad Tablet offers far more in the way of expandability and external connection capabilities.
If you can’t pick between to two, I’d say to wait it out until Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich hits the scene the end of this year and see what kind of tablets and technology emerge from that.
Best,
-Dave
2 or 3 inches thick with the folio? Are you serious – did you actually measure this? That’s thicker than the first laptops I was using 15 years ago…
Hi RikF,
Sorry, perhaps I was a bit over-estimating, but the folio is pushing 2 inches when all is said and done. Both the keyboard and the tablet are about a half inch each, and the thick leather padding adds some width, too.
It’s not bad, it just seems awfully bulky, especially when a MacBook Air or Lenovo U300s provides less thickness with more features. Consider the folio a novelty, then, much like the iPad keyboard dock. A nice tool but hardly a necessity.
Thanks for reading,
-Dave
Hi Dave,
sorry – re-reading that makes it sound more offensive than incredulous, which is what I was going for. It was an actual inquiry rather than the rather accusatory way it sounds as I read it back. Thanks for the review. I’m so very interested in this tablet and they are few and far between.
Hello,
Could you tell me whether the keyboard on the leather folio is removable? I hope it can provide some flexibility if I can remove the keyboard from the leather case once and a while.
Great products but the sales process is a nightmare. I would like to let you know my experience with purchasing Lenovo Direct. This is my second purchase with Lenovo this year, a T410s with docking station and a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet. Both orders were a nightmare. With the order of the Thinkpad Tablet, the sales chat staff placed the order wrong and confirm they corrected it. The order was shipped incorrect, no worry they would cancel and reorder with the correct options. Now I have two incorrect orders and billed twice. I emailed the rep a number of times but no answers, called others and limited responses. PLEASE NEVER PURCHASE DIRECT FROM LENOVO. NEVER!!! And you have to wait two to three weeks for orders. Buy from Amazon, pay less and get the order in two days, with great customer service. Two orders and both were incorrect and where a nightmare to resolve the issues after purchasing. Again Great Products, but DO NOT BUY DIRECT NEVER AGAIN WILL I BUY FROM LENOVO.
Thanks for your review I got my TPT exactly a week ago today and really like it. Out of the box, the stylus isn’t much fun because the only functionality it has is the Notes Mobile app; You can’t use it for much else. I ended up Purchasing the MyScript stylus app Which basically adds stylus functionality to anything that requires text input (am writing these comments with my stylus) and that really improves/enhances this tablet (the APP is $16). Also, the tablet has an SD slot, not Micro SD.